Google Classroom UPDATE: Parent Summaries!

Last night I did a live stream on Facebook where I explored the new updates in Google Classroom. These updates were literally released on Wednesday. The live stream was kind of a hot mess, as I started it during what I refer to as the “witching hour” at my house (nearly bedtime, bath time, etc…what was I actually thinking?!). I would probably just tell you to skip it and read the official blog post by Google for Edu but my daughter is pretty adorable and worth the watch. HA! Plus if you are a visual learner like me, you appreciate seeing things happen in action. I recommend skipping around on the video if you do watch it. I’m going to focus on the parent summary part of the update in this post.

For the rest of you, let me summarize my findings…

Parent Communication in Google Classroom

And everyone heard the skies open and angels singing. Ya’ll. I’ve been waiting my whole Google life for some kind of parent integration in Classroom. It was the missing piece. So once you create a Classroom and add students, you will notice that there is now a button to invite guardians.

Once you have invited a parent they receive an email from Google Classroom. Mrs. Pearsall at CHHS had a great idea to send parents a Remind text to be expecting an email invitation. This way they knew what to do with the email and also to double check spam/clutter. Check out the sample parent email below (images didn’t load – try not to judge, people)…

Once the parent clicks “ACCEPT” it opens a page in Google Classroom where they can choose their frequency of summaries and time zone preferences.

Now once the parent is all set up – we **THINK** it will then connect that student (across all their classes) to the parent who just accepted “guardianship” of that student.

One thing to keep in mind is that you MUST have enable parent summaries in order for that “guardian” to receive updates on their student. If this is “off” (which, PS, is the default) they will NOT receive updates and you will NOT see the “invite parent” portion of this page.

I am waiting for one of my “parents” to receive an update of some kind from my “fake classroom” in oder to show you what that looks like from THEIR perspective. I will update here once I know more! Meanwhile at the ranch, parents are NOT inside your classroom and they CANNOT see other students and their work, comments, etc. This is a summary of the activity of the classroom (announcements, assignments, grades, missing work, etc) that APPLIES TO THEIR particular student.

Also, for my friends in the good old Bluegrass state, you will not be able to utilize the “EMAIL” button because it opens the “Gmail” app on your domain…which is, unfortunately, blocked statewide. (#FREEGmailKY) I hope I’m wrong on this but it’s what I’ve discovered so far…I’d love for someone to prove me wrong because the accessibility and ease of this little button for teachers is pretty incredible.